To the editor:

Increase the county sales tax, they say? Has anyone ever looked at their utility bills, their phone bills? All have county sales tax. Utilicorp, Westar, SW Bell, Sprint, ATT, Sunflower Cable and the list goes on. Douglas County is not just the city of Lawrence, but Eudora, Lecompton, Baldwin and even Vinland.

The county commissioners and economic development committee must be smoking something when they meet to come up with these ideas. The county tax will be higher for the school district on utilities and purchases, for the hospital, for the university and for Baker and also local industry!

Tell the over 800 employees of the Kmart store and distribution center that you want to raise sales tax. They are already contemplating how to live on unemployment. And in conjunction with that may yet come forward a request for another tax abatement.

Any abatements made should be offset by reduction of the county, city and USD 497 budgets by amounts to equal the abatement given. That is the only way it can work to begin to keep property taxes down.

Remember, commissioners and economic development gurus, the other guru of business, Warren Buffet is getting ready to open his Cabela’s and Furniture Mart and the geese fly north in the summer and will not be dropping eggs in Douglas County. Think about it.

David Holroyd,

Lawrence